Dance With The Devil
by x-the-rising-x
Summary: Kate reflects on her relationship with Jack.


_**A/N: **_So everybody who just got an author alert right now probably hates me a lot. No, it isn't BL. Yes, I am sorry.

**Pairing: **Jack/Kate (Kate's POV), snippets of Kate/Sawyer

**Spoilers: **Basically everything, but mainly up to 4x14.

**Summary: **Kate reflects on her relationship with Jack.

**Dance With The Devil **

Kate Austen certainly knows how to fuck up when it comes to men.

She's pretty sure it started with Tom, and maybe it was because they were young and childhood sweethearts and she already hated him just because he _was _a man and he kind of looked like Wayne in a weird way. She loved him too, though, and that was the main problem.

The word "father" in regards to Wayne tastes bitter on her lips, or perhaps like the aftertaste of vodka – a fitting association. She has only known one man to be her father, but when she sets fire to her mother's home, he can't even look at her. All he can do is give her an hour head start and pray that the police he sends out don't find her.

She meets a few men on the run, but none of the relationships ever last. It's her fault once again because, while some of them just use her for a quick screw, those who actually fall for her barely stand a chance. She always runs.

"My father was an alcoholic," Kevin tells her on the night they meet, and Kate is pretty sure that's why she falls for him. She ignores the irony that he is a police officer, and instead falls in love with the fact that he hasn't touched a drop of alcohol since he was 20.

Kevin makes her feel safe, but Kate wonders if it's just because he has eyes in the back of his head and a gun in the holster on his hip. She is indifferent to the ring on her finger, she realizes all too often. Eventually, the pregnancy test reads negative and she runs again because that was the only thing keeping her around.

--

When they crash on the island, Kate isn't quite sure why she is drawn to Jack. He is a doctor, like Tom, she finds out on the first day, and Sawyer seems to think that's the reason. He took flying lessons, like Tom, she finds out on the first night, and the comparison intensifies. But then she realizes that he and Tom are really nothing alike, and she is surprisingly relieved.

On the island, there is no chance for her to be a flight risk.

Jack won't let her make excuses, but with him she doesn't really need to. They morph into a team: with Jack comes Kate and vice versa. _"I need to know that you've got my back,"_ he says to her when they are crouched in the jungle by the hatch. Kate realizes that this is the first time in her life when she was actually needed so much by someone else.

Kate tries to scold herself for dreaming about him. She tries to stop herself from wishing, when he walks in on her in the shower, that he would just give in to the temptation and make the first move. She hates herself for the triviality of the awkward and heated moments between them – the graze of a hand or a flirty stare from across the beach camp – when they really should be worrying about more important things.

She connects with Sawyer because they are both essentially convicts, and in some ways he gets her more than Jack does. But Sawyer can't do much more than stare down her shirt and give her a little twinge in her stomach when they kiss. She is attracted to him, but she's pretty sure that every woman on the island is attracted to him, so she ignores it for a while.

--

She apologizes far too much. _"I'm sorry."_

_"Are you?" _Jack asks one day in the jungle, and his words make her stop in her tracks.

She cries and he holds her in a more comforting embrace than ever given to her by either Tom or Kevin. She touches her lips to his, and when their tongues collie he tastes sweet and sour at the same time. This is them: his sweat clinging to her palm as she slides her hand down his cheek, the afternoon sun peeking it's way through the trees of the lush and secluded clearing, their labored breathing as she pulls away, the look of utter bewilderment and enrapture in his eyes as she rests her forehead against his own.

Kate runs – the soft and moist forest floor hitting the soles of her shoes, her heart beating wildly as the tears gather and she attempts to shut out the sound of his soft voice calling after her: _"Kate." _

Thirteen days later, they get caught in a net and Kate finds the situation as ridiculous as it is arousing. She pretends not to feel him against her thigh, and when he shoots the rope and she falls onto the ground on top of him they both laugh, recognizing the absurdity of the situation.

_"I'm sorry I kissed you," _she says by the fire that night. She really isn't at all, but her own self-consciousness makes her think that his lacking to bring up the kiss means that she had gotten the signs wrong all along and he didn't really want her at all.

But then he responds with an _"I'm not," _and the setting is perfect, and the two of them are beautiful in the firelight, and he leans in first, and Kate thinks that she might feel more for him than she has for any other man, and it could be perfect, and then they hear a sound and the moment is over.

They don't talk about this moment – it disappears into the wind like future promises that they'll forget to keep. She flirts with Sawyer and she flirts with Jack. Kate's fickle, but she's always known this, and that's what makes her a bitch.

--

The first time she chooses Jack they are on their knees on the Others' dock. Their eyes meet in a fleeting glance; she blinks to say _I love you_.

She and Sawyer are thrown into cages across from one another, and Kate finds it nice to be in his company. They haul rocks and make jokes that fall flat because both of them are really wondering what is going to happen to them. At night it gets cold.

The first time she sees Jack since they have been captured she can't touch him. The glass is cold against her grimy fingers, and Kate physically aches to hold him – in a way that makes her want to hurt herself for not holding him more before. He desperately tries to soothe her with his words when she starts to cry – his palms flat against the physical barrier, his words halted at the emotional one.

She tells him he has to do it – that he has to do the surgery, that he has to save Sawyers life, and he yells at her and calls to Juliet throws her out. Kate hates herself for being so vulnerable in front of him, and hates him for making her that way.

--

Kate is confused. She lets Sawyer fuck her in his cage. Everything is raw and fast and animalistic. It feels good. But it doesn't feel right.

--

She finds it ironic how, in the one moment where it is actually vital for her to run, she can't. But then Jack's voice comes screaming out of the walkie-talkie, and fighting every instinct in her body, she does.

On the beach, Jack makes her recount the story he told her on the day they met.

_"And you said you were so afraid."_

He makes her promise and her heart plummets when the connection is cut off. It's over, she thinks. He is gone.

But he isn't gone, and she goes back for him, echoing the words he spoke on the beach just a few months ago: _"Live together, die alone." _

They are reunited, but he is not Jack. Something has happened – something has removed the depth and warmth from his eyes. Something has taken away his calm and inviting body language. He is rigid. He uses a folding chair to try and create distance between the two of them.

He should have known it wouldn't work, because she comes right up to him and grabs onto his hands. They whisper, and they argue, and they are so close. _"Jack. What did they tell you?" _And he steals a glance at his lips, and she thinks for a minute that he's going to give in. She _wants _him to give in, and she realizes that it's always been about the two of them: there was never any triangle or ambivalence.

Juliet interrupts.

--

They retuned to camp and things have changed. Kate knows that Jack knows, and she carries around this guilty weight: she feels like she has been unfaithful – like she has committed adultery. And this is when she starts to hate herself even more: she tries to seduce him by wrapping her lips around a dirty spoon. At the time, she thinks she's being childish – they've been through too much together to have their relationship be shameless flirting.

In reality, Jack is not the only one heartbroken.

She hates herself for using Sawyer, but she sees Jack and Juliet eating dinner together, and an insuppressible jealousy rages in her. She pretends it isn't Sawyer inside of her, and when she moans _"Jack" _softly into his shoulder, he doesn't notice.

So this is how it is: Sawyer isn't stupid, and he catches on to the fact that Kate is using him. She's never used anyone before, and she hates herself for it, because Sawyer really loves her too much for him to deserve her using him in this way.

--

Jack tells her he loves her, and it's as though he's yanking on her heart until it is sore. The moment is private and simple. They are no longer separate entities – they are one and the same. He loves her. She loves him. The only difference – he _says _it.

--

The short-lived romance between Jack and Juliet fizzles out before it begins. Kate almost feels bad for Juliet – the poor woman never stood a chance – but then Jack gets sick and none of that matters anymore.

She is terrified. His words – _"if anything happens to me…" _– rip through her, and she feels as though she's staring down the barrel of a gun. She won't let herself consider the possibility.

Their interruption this time is the chloroform: her lips were on the verge of mouthing an _I love you_.

--

Sawyer jumps off the helicopter, and she loves him for that.

Jack tells her he won't leave without her. Kate no longer loves him. She is fairly sure she's _in _love with him.

--

On _The Searcher, _the dynamic is different. Jack sees her one night at dinner in one of Penny's skirts, her hair finally clean and lying in tame curls down to her waist. He double takes and stares for a while. Kate clears her throat and pretends not to notice.

_"I have always been with you," _she tells him on their fourth night. He looks taken aback, and Kate wonders if her expression was similar when he told her he loved her. She just smiles serenely and walks away.

She places Aaron in his small room below deck, and returns to her own. Her hands shake. Surprisingly though, it's not the prospect of motherhood. Her heart doesn't race when thinking about the task she's just committed herself to.

No. Her blood rushes and her head pounds because she's tired of all of this: she's tired of the vague declarations and meaningful stares. She's tired of wanting so much, but not being able to give anything herself. She's tired of fighting the urge.

"Fuck." She attempts to pull out her hair tie, but it snags in her abundant locks. When she turns around and sees him standing in her doorway, she's only mildly surprised.

"Do you, um, want some help?" He sounds awkward, confused, and slightly delirious. The equilibrium between the two of them has shifted in these past moments since her declaration upstairs. She knows he feels it too.

Kate just nods and turns around. He crosses the room and slips his fingers into her hair with precision. He finishes in a heartbeat, and her hair falls down across her back. But he doesn't retreat: he doesn't step back like he always does. No: he moves closer – close enough to press up against her from behind; close enough to run his hands down her bare arms, to make her breath hitch in her throat.

From the moment she turns in his arms and their lips collide in an act of desperation, everything blends together. The room swirls. She is up against the wall, nails digging at his back underneath his shirt. Their tongues glide together and they taste of each other as they fall back onto her bed. There is a rush of heat, of sweat, of skin against skin, of hot and open-mouthed kisses, of hands tangled in hair and lips muffling moans. There is the ripping of fabric, the tangling of limbs, the burning sensation of his lips against her ears, her neck, her stomach. He is inside of her, and she wonders how she's managed this long without him. She arches up to meet his thrusts, he kisses the hot and salty tears of emotion that run down her cheeks.

This is them: they are breathing as one – they _are _one.

There is a mutual release – it vibrates off the walls of the bedroom in moans and sighs and yells. Their eyes meet, and she knows that this is them. They are one.

--

Afterwards, she lies sprawled across his chest, listening to his heart beat in time with hers.

They don't speak, but they don't have to.

There will be some semblance of a relationship. It will end suddenly and restart after her trial. She will ride out the emotional rollercoaster that it takes to be with him, simply because she needs him. She will no longer run. There will be an engagement. There will be alcohol and distrust and pills. There will be a fight. There will be another ending, and there will be another resurrection the night before they return to the island.

They will conceive.

She doesn't know this now. All she knows now is his heartbeat, his hand on the small of her back, his fingers tangled in her hair.

She hates herself less now.

This is them. They are one.


End file.
